PART SEVEN: Eclipse
July 2012
She had been sitting starring into nowhere for awhile, for how long she didn't know. Her head was going in circles, her mind asking a thousand questions at the same time. But she couldn't find the answers. And there she was in the city that was hers, in the place that was her safe secret spot, where everyone knew her by name, but she felt alone in the middle of the crowd. Alone. So she did the only thing that seemed reasonable at the time.
"Hey Jimmy, can I borrow your phone?" – she asked him. He gave it to her without hesitation and with no questions.
She searched for that one particularly number, for that one particularly someone. She had found it and so she called.
"Hi Captain." – she heard on the other side of the line.
"It's not Jimmy..." – she simple said. She didn't have to say her name, he had recognized her voice. "So ... I was wondering... if ... well... it might sound stupid... well, could you come pick me up at the hotel...? Something happened and I ... and I... I just need to get out of here..." – her voice was trembling. Her ask seemed almost like a begging, a rescue.
"Sure..." – he said. And then he hung up.
"What are you doing here? I thought you had the night off" said Captain Brass.
"And I have, Jimmy. I came here to pick up a friend. But what happened in here?" asked the police detective as he took a look around to the police confusion that surrounded him.
"Girl walked death to her friends in the hotel lobby."
"Geez, that's though! Have you seen..." and just when he was about to ask for her he noticed the girl he was looking for being processed by CSI Sara Sidle. "Excuse me" he said before started walking towards the girl's direction.
"How long is this gonna take?" asked Grace while Sara was taking her fingerprints.
"'I'm almost done." she looked at Grace with sorry in her heart.
"You're here" said Gracie when the person she was expecting arrived.
"I told you I'd be here." he looked at her eyes. She wasn't the same girl he remembered. The bubbly, happy smiling girl he had a memory of was now gone. Her eyes that once were happy, were now vague. The happy tone in her voice was now a monochord. Her smile had disappeared and now on her face were tears. And her stare, her stare was empty.
As soon as she heard that familiar voice Sara looked over her shoulder and smiled at him.
"Is it gonna take much long, Sara?" he asked.
"No, I just need to swab her DNA." as soon as she did that Sara picked her kit and left them alone. But Grace didn't move.
"Where do you want me to take you?" he asked.
"I really don't know anyone here. I mean, everyone that I know is ... I could ask Nick or Sara or Greg but all of them are working on the case. And the only place I'd go is now ... is now haunted. So, hmm, I'd say your place, Detective Vartann." she said as she looked up to meet his gaze.